She breathed heavily and complained of chest pains.
It had been three nights and her body yearned for its cracked chakras.
Acupuncture wouldn’t work, her nerve endings had snapped.
If only she could drag her feet on the rug.
If only there was a rug on the hospital floor.
She could create enough static to grow lightning bolts on her fingerprints; touch her chest, and re-spark her chi.
But it seemed her lifeline, a contaminated drip attached to her skin, and the fabric of her humanity were untangled at the seams.
She was attached to her detachment with the living even though she still had a pulse.
Faint as it was, a pulse is a pulse.
And it slowly counted nurses footsteps echoing gongs measuring the distance to her final exit as they walked passed her dilapidating frame.
This was that third night and she was terrified of sleeping on the floor. Again.
The thin blanket failed to keep the cold floor at bay.
When that cold with coloniser tendencies came, it decided to stay.
By some strange osmosis, it binded to her bones.
It was as though her body grew roots of frost and planted itself on the hospital floor.
She would shiver. Gradually faded away.
She would quiver. Her voice dropped a few notches.
There were no doctors.
It had been more than enough days of Mabeleza seeing death play musical chairs with other patients in the admission ward at Chris Hani Baragwanath.
Waiting her turn.
She was 50 years old and loved me like I was one of her three.
For 72 hours, my aunt waited to get a bed at the hospital in 2014.
I remember that Monday when she fell ill.
Attempting to go to a local clinic, she struggled out her Mofolo, Soweto home.
Her bones, the same ones that would later meet the cold floor, crumbled.
She stumbled. She collapsed and was rushed to Bara that Monday.
This was the first day.
This is where the contamination on her arm from the drip began.
This is where she was seated in a wheelchair and her wait began.
Tuesday came. My cousin, Origin, her oldest son skipped through other half-alive patients on the floor.
He had fruits for Mabeleza. She had no appetite.
He had tears in his eyes. She had death in hers.
He could see it lingering through this window to her soul.
He had a younger brother and sister to get back to.
She had the floor to lay back on.
Wednesday came. Nothing had changed except her condition for the worse.
She begged him not to leave her. She could no longer bear her new spine of concrete.
She was still waiting for a bed.
She never got one.
The hospital said she did. Whether she did or not, Mabeleza died in the early hours of Thursday morning after her condition had deteriorated.
I broke into half. And those halfs into others in an eternal domino effect.
To this day, nothing inside me is intact.
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said R90 of a our premium medical aid payment goes to brokers, who only make medical aids more expensive, meaning the poor suffer most.
Maybe if brokers were things of the past and medical aid was cheaper, Mabeleza would have had one. She may have had access to a bed. Maybe even a doctor.